


Rafflesia

by nonbinaryezrabridger



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Addiction, don’t copy to other sites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:40:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21777673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinaryezrabridger/pseuds/nonbinaryezrabridger
Summary: Every day, Raphael thinks about Isabelle. Then one day, he doesn't want to anymore.
Relationships: Meliorn/Raphael Santiago
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Rafflesia

**Author's Note:**

> ugh this is short but it doesn't fit with my other shadowhunters fic so I'm posting it alone
> 
> Rafflesia is a kind of flower that smells like rotting meat

\----

There are two parts to Raphael’s life; the before Isabelle and the after. She is a defining event, like an earthquake or a tidal wave. 

It’s not good to define oneself by your trauma but also, Raphael doesn’t know how to stop.

In the after, his blood shakes with the need, all consuming and beautiful in a sickly way, like one of those flowers that smell like rotting meat. He feels like he’s decomposing from the inside, sometimes. Other times he feels okay, like the past is far away, behind a muffling layer of knit fabric.

Meliorn helps. 

He will be able to love again. He never thought it would be true, but it is. He loves Meliorn and it’s nothing at all like loving Isabelle. They’re healthy, damn it. They’re built on friendship and respect and not need and want and taking away everything that made him him.

Meliorn watches him, lazily intent with a layer of hidden threat, like a cat lying in a sunbeam. The seelie’s eyes wander across rapheal’s features, mapping them like an explorer plotting landmarks. Despite nothing about raphael changing, meliorn looks at him with as much awe and love as the first time he did this. It makes the sluggish blood in raphael's blood shift a bit faster and he ducks his head, hiding the feelings clear on his face.

Meliorn has never been explicit about loving him, but he’s never hidden it either. That intensity had grown slowly, like a plant unfurls to reach for the sun. But it’s always been there, laid out in the slow roving of his dark eyes. Only now is Raphael noticing it; his love had not grown as slowly or as easily. It had staggered and struggled, fear and memories of Isabelle holding it back often. But still it had persisted, and Rapheal stops to consider it now.

Meliorn asks:

“You’re thinking about her?”

Raphael almost asks how he knows, but he also already knows how. He’s seen his own expression on Meliorn’s face when he thinks about Isabelle. So he just nods and walks over to the couch where Meliorn lays, tangling his fingers in his hair. Meliorn smiles like sunbeams, filling Raphael with a warmth he hasn't felt since he turned. He says:

“I don’t want to think about her anymore.”

Meliorn just grins and says:

“Good.”


End file.
